Calculating time in an out of combat


Beginner Box


I just picked up the pathfinder beginner box, and while reading the rules and glancing over the GM book, I noticed that things outside of combat take hours to complete. Please tell me this isn't real time hours. Is there a formula to calculate how long an hour is in game? Also, how important is time in combat? I'm sure these are real easy/stupid questions, but I'm new and the rule book left this out

Liberty's Edge

A combat round is usually thought of as six seconds. Thus ten rounds in a minute. It varies from GM to GM how much of a stickler they are as to what you can say to each other in six seconds.

Out of combat time can be as fluid as your GM needs it to be.

EX:
Player: I am gonna cruise around the local bars and gather information about the local thieve's guild.

GM: OK, it takes you about 4 hours. Make a diplomacy check. (To the rest of the PCs) What do the rest of you do during that 4 hours?

Sovereign Court

Yes game time and real time are stretched and squished depending on the situation. You may have a combat that takes an hour in real life, but only took a minute in the game. Likewise, an hour spent gathering information takes as long as it takes to roll a die and tell your GM the result.

When you care how long something takes, for instance when you have a deadline or an active buff, you can ask your GM to adjudicate how much time passes.

Scarab Sages

Each round of combat is 6 seconds of in game time , from top of order to top of order.

Out of combat, that generally means in-game hours. Not real time.

Edit: Ninja-ed.


So in my situation, if I decided to sleep for 8 hours, the GM would conduct a diplomacy check to see what the other players would do in thy time period, and then would decide how long, real time, those 8 hours lasts?

Sovereign Court

If you are sleeping and they are doing other things, yes the DM would determine time passing, but I may have confused you, there is no diplomacy check.

The example I gave before of something taking a long time in the game but a short time in real life was just one of many skill checks you can make in the game. The specific example is when you want to walk around a town, or talk to people in a bar to gather information about a subject. That is one use of the diplomacy skill. Sleeping doesn't tend to require any skills except perhaps perception to hear something loud enough to wake you.

Liberty's Edge

Time spent in game does not have any necessary correlation to real world time. If everyone in the party is sleeping, and nothing happens to them, the GM just says "OK, it's morning, what now?" If your wizard needs to spend 2 hours writing spells into his spellbook, then either the GM finds out what everyone else is doing and adjudicates it, or just says, "it's done." Make sense?

Grand Lodge

If the adventure takes place on the far side of the planet, the GM might say, "You travel the storm-tossed ocean for six months," then start the introduction. Actual PFS example.


As others have said, in-game time and real-life time are separate.

You can think about it like watching a movie or reading a book: the story doesn't follow every second of the characters' lives. If nothing exciting is happening, the story skips over it. In the same way the DM can say "Ok, you sleep for 8 hours. It's now morning, what would you like to do?"


Kalshane wrote:

As others have said, in-game time and real-life time are separate.

You can think about it like watching a movie or reading a book: the story doesn't follow every second of the characters' lives. If nothing exciting is happening, the story skips over it.

A Star Wars "wipe," for example. :D

Community / Forums / Pathfinder / Pathfinder First Edition / Paizo Products / Beginner Box / Calculating time in an out of combat All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.
Recent threads in Beginner Box